The Lessons Pain Teaches
by Cornerofmadness
Summary: Malcolm is in more pain than he can easily handle and it's not all because of what Paul Lazar has done.


**Title**– The Lessons Pain Teaches

**Author's Note**–This was written for schweinsty at comment_fic for the prompt:

Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, Everything hurts after the events of episode 8

XXX

Malcolm rested on his bed, concentrating on taking only shallow breaths. His ribs – bruised or cracked he didn't know because he didn't do as ordered and go in for x-rays – ached with each breath as he clutched frozen peas to them. Under his shoulders, wrapped in a towel was a bag of frozen ravioli that he'd likely never eat because the heaviness rarely sat well in his delicate stomach. It was easier to rest on the raviolis than the peas and either way he shouldn't complain. He deserved the pain he was in. He'd been an idiot and being bruised head to toe was getting off light. Lazar had him dead to rights and if his father's apprentice had been one to kill up close, he'd be a corpse in a tunnel.

He'd never sleep with all this pain but a least he was used to that. What hurt Malcolm more than the abuse he'd suffered to his body was the pain deep in his soul. He'd been taken off the case. He couldn't protect his mother. Hell, he couldn't even get her to listen to him. It hurt to consider Eve's words 'your mother was drunk in the middle of the day.' He could play it off as the trauma of learning her husband's friend could be coming to pay visit, but Malcolm knew if his mother wasn't a functional alcoholic, she was close to it. He would try to get Ainsley to take their mother on a trip, get them both out the line of fire. Well, he'd try it if he thought he could blast his mother out of the damnable Milton house as if that was a reason not to take a vacation where a serial killer couldn't find her.

And Ainsley would never agree. She was more concerned with being first to Paul Lazar's story. She had ignored his warnings, gone looking around the hospital and nearly got herself killed. Maybe doing stupid, risky things was inheritable. Ainsley felt entitled to be first to the story, tried to use his barging into her interview with their father to manipulate him for information. That hurt but not as much as how she manipulated him and the fact, he was little more than their father's broken toy to expose his weaknesses to Doctor Whitly, to the entire viewing world who might look at that interview. He had asked her not to use that part, but he knew she would. It was her money shot.

Groaning, Malcolm shifted the peas to the other side of his body. Sharper than his tortured ribs was the ugly recognition that he wasn't the only arrogant one in the family. He feared Ainsley was one step beyond him, right into their father's narcissistic realm. Martin Whitly had infected both of them and maybe that was the worst pain of all, one that all the pain killers in the world wouldn't touch, was the one that came from the well of fear he lugged with him everywhere. _We're the same. I am my father's son_. The mere thought of it triggered a reflex, making him suck in a deep breath to calm done.

He curled up with a whimper of pain, but that action made the pain worse. Malcolm levered himself up and he tossed his frozen food back in the freezer. Why didn't he have gel packs given how often he got hurt because he always ran into danger, because maybe, in the deep dark parts of his mind, he feared truly being his father's prodigal son and wanted to remove himself from the world before he turned killer.

"You won't," he whispered. Maybe if he heard it out loud, he'd believe it.

Because he wasn't just Jessica and Martin Whitly's son. He was also Gil and Jackie Arroyo's adopted child. If there was fault in his soul, one his father tried to fissure open, it had been cemented over by the Arroyos.

No, _that_ was the truest pain he felt this night, the one of disappointing Gil and he had, deeply. He hadn't listened to Gil, multiple times really. He had gotten so used to listening only to himself – was that some of the narcissism he'd inherited ? – that he didn't listen to good advice. The anger, fear and disappointment warring in Gil's face as he dressed Malcolm down after Lazar let him go made the pains in his ribs, shoulders and back seem like nothing. He had hurt his friend. _You let him pop you like Bubblewrap_. Gil wasn't just angry when he uttered those words, he'd been terrified at how close he'd come to losing Malcolm. He couldn't tell Gil just how afraid he'd been in those moments because it would only make it hurt worse.

Sagging against the kitchen island, Malcolm knew he was back home with family. He had never gained that with the FBI but here he had people he cared about and in turned cared for him. He almost wished he wasn't here because now he had to worry about Gil. He couldn't easily ignore the order to give Lazar's case over to his former, hateful, colleagues. It would be one thing to take himself down, though he would be loathed to waste his second change and would probably come undone without murders to solve. But if he was caught looking into Lazar's case, he would take Gil down with him, maybe even Dani and JT too. Could he risk that? The arrogant part of him thought yes because he was the only one who could get Lazar – and the answers he so desperately needed – and that he was clever enough to not get caught.

Then he thought of the strain in Gil's face and knew he couldn't cause more pain. That's what he'd tell himself to get through the night at any rate. It was going to be a long night and dawn would be slow to come.


End file.
